Golden Delicious: Concert recording with the Sony PCM-D50

Posted at Friday, April 11, 2008

I've just finished uploading my first ever concert recording to Archive.org. A few of my favorite bands are taper-friendly, meaning they allow fans to bring audio recorders to shows and share recordings with other fans. Typically the only restriction is that you can't sell the audio, which seems more than fair.

So with that, I bring you Mike Doughty's Band, recorded live at the Williamsburg Music Hall in Brooklyn, New York on April 10, 2008. This is my first concert recording, but I think it came out quite well. I attribute that almost entirely to the Sony PCM-D50 digital audio recorder I was using. I used the internal mics, stood by the back of the room, and pointed the recorder at the stage.

I was quite happy withe clarity and volume of the recording. The only problems I've had involve uploading the files properly to Archive.org... I'm pretty sure I must have done something wrong with the file naming, because while the FLAC versions of the songs have metadata like song titles, the MP3 and OGG Vorbis files do not.

Anyway, have a listen and let me know what you think.

 

Labels: , , ,

5 Comments:

  1. Andreas said...
    April 11, 2008 11:17 PM  
    I'm super impressed with that quality. Good job on the recording there, mate. I'm on the look-out for a good portable recorder and would love to lay my hands on the PMC-D50, but I'm afraid its just over my meager budget at the moment. However, I really need one. I'm just starting my career as a radio/multimedia journalist and need something of decent quality to hold me over at least until I manage to scrape up enough dough to buy something better. Do you have any recommendations? I've been looking at the zoom h2, but I'm not sure how well it would hold together out in the field. Anyway, great blog. Keep up the good work.

    /Andreas
    Brad Linder said...
    April 11, 2008 11:51 PM  
    I know several people that use the Zoom H2 to record interview for broadcast. It's really less than ideal since it has fairly noisy preamps. But for $200 it's hard to find a better recorder.
    Andreas said...
    April 12, 2008 11:10 AM  
    Thanks, Brad, for the quick answer. Makes me think,though, that maybe it would be worth to shell out the extra dollars for the Sony instead, at least in the long run. Just have to dig a little deeper in the old wallet and be a little hungrier for a month or so.
    Brad Linder said...
    April 12, 2008 7:16 PM  
    Yeah, you tend to get what you pay for. But the prices are falling. There was a time when you'd be lucky to find a pro quality recorder for under $1000. And technically, there are plenty of things you could do with a Tascam HD-P2 that you can't with a Sony PCM-D50, but for $500 it's an awesome machine and sounds way better than almost anything else in its price range. The Marantz PMD620 for $400 is reportedly pretty good too, but I haven't tried it myself. And the Olympus LS-10 might be worth checking out as well.
    Anonymous said...
    March 14, 2009 1:02 PM  
    Brad,

    Do you know if there is a way to retrieve the time stamp info for each file for the PCM-D50 ? It appears in the display whenever you play back files that are in the memory and the unit has a clock with time and date. But when I download my files, I only get the date info.

    Thanks,

    Sam

Post a Comment



Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)